MKNE political information

"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognised to be true." Albert Einstein.
"In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot." Czeslaw Milosz

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The dangers of an Obama overhype?

A major reason for hoping for an Obama presidency is that we will be spared another round of the Republican party dreamworld dance. However there are dangers in the rather orgasmic enthusiasm behind his campaign.

Can he survive the collision between his build-up and the reality?

The Perils of the Build-Up were brilliantly explained by John Kenneth Galbraith:

Then comes the build-up. He is a man transformed indeed he is no longer a man but a superman. His eccentricities become the mark of a unique personality. His hobbies are the refreshment of an intense and active mind. His wife becomes a gracious, untiring, and selfless partner. If he has had several wives, he has been tried by sadness. If he is a teetotaller, this marks him as a stern, disciplined, and dedicated man. If he is given to belting the bottle, it will be said that he is not lacking in warmth and human qualities. But most remarkable of all are his qualifications for the job he has assumed. Where others ponder, he has solutions. That is because he is able to separate the essentials from the nonessentials and then find a painless course of action by shooting straight for the target. It has been the fault of lesser men that they had left the impression that there was a choice only between equally grim alternatives. In fact, the build-up is particularly likely to occur at a time when problems are numerous, vexatious, and incomprehensible. Not knowing how to control nuclear energy, disarm, increase needed expenditures, balance the budget, eliminate farm surpluses ….we find it desirable to invent people who can do these things.

When they fail to do the miraculous., the expectations machine turns viciously against them reducing them to pitiful wrecks.

Galbraith ends thus:

Although there is no clear remedy for the build-up, it might help were we to resolve to remember that in a democracy leaders, at their best, are only the first among near-equals. So they will always share the bafflement of their followers. To build extravagant images of their wisdom renders no more service than the other modern habit of freely asserting their total venality.

Serendipity unearths resources

The need to check up on the pronounciation of the computer-devastating Estonian umlaut-O character has led to the discovery of a very useful looking languages resources site OMNIGLOT.

This includes a link to a rather wonderful concoction – the Coloralphabet for writing English. Something worth playing with in more arty moments.

But seriously this site seems to have riches for the language dabbling amateurs of the world.

So thanks to the LibDem Presidential debates for triggering this exploration. For Estonian look here (you will need to know the International Phoenetic Alphabet though.) Then you can pronounce Lembit’s name correctly.

Lest see how Blogger copes with these texts as displayed on the relevant OMNIGLOT pages

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Konjunktura nepabegs - keeping money in safe havens

‘The market will not go away’ a statement true in any language (in this case Lithuanian) because the dynamics of self-regulating systems adapt to any constraints regardless of what we may want to happen. So with the proliferation of bank deposit protection schemes, market awareness is leading to a scramble by some voluntary organisations to shift accounts between institutions to make sure that their money is spread between accounts that are individually covered to the maximum £50,000 This is quite a disruptive process…

With all the takeovers and so on there doesn’t seem to be a readily available roadmap though. Most people know that the Co-Operative bank owns SMILE online bank, so if you have a deposit in both you are ‘only’ covered to a maximum of £50,000 as the sum of both accounts. Useless to open anew account in one if you already have an account in the other. But if a bank now takes over another and you had deposits in both your maximum coverage is halved –and many may not realise this. Is the banking industry making this shift transparent?

Not all organisations seem to be covered by FSCS though. Are we in any way protected as a party for our party accounts?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Another fine mess? (Canadian version)

It could be a really classic FPTP nonsense soup in Canada today as the 40th General Election finally gets to the polls. Yes, the ‘True North’ uses the same beloved electoral system as our own dear First-Past-The-Post Westminster Parliament, and with five parties in serious contention in one region or another no sensible person is making any serious bets of their farms on the outcome.

The main tracking polls show the Conservatives in the lead nationally (35%) eight point ahead of the Liberals (27%) with the New Democrat Party on 19% , the Bloc Quebecois on 10% and the Greens on 9% so the Tories –currently with a minority government – ought to be favourites. But hold on. Regional variations and the structure of marginals means it even more difficult to read

The BQ only fight in Quebec so that national percentage translates to 41 percent where their candidates are standing. Tories and Liberals are tied at 21% each and the NDP on 12% The Tories made big gains here in the last election but are threatened in at least half their seats by Liberals who have recovered hugely from an abyss earlier in this campaign.

In the Prairies Provinces the Tories have 52% to the Liberals 18% and the NDP 21% while in British Columbia and the Artic the Tories have 40%. Liberals 23% NDP 25% Greens 12% Marginals in BC only around Vancouver really, where Liberal and NDP support is appreciably higher.

That leaves the Maratime Provinces and Ontario. Maratime polling shows Tories on 24%, Liberals on 37%, NDP on 28% and Greens 9% and all sorts of marginals some three way. And as for Ontario, the biggest Province with about a third of the seats… well…

Cons 34% Liberal 35% NDP 21% Green 10%

Most likely result is another Tory minority administration. The NDP could conceivably overtake the Liberals by winning in the multi-way marginals to become the official opposition provided they get more seats than the BQ. Or the Liberals could squeak the 40 or so marginals and so emerge as the largest party and lead a minority administration. If tactical voting really takes hold the Tories could be creamed despite having the largest popular vote, and this is being urged by a former Tory Premier of Newfoundland who is pushing an initiative called ABUT (Anyone Bar the Tories). If so the Tories could be essentially restricted to Alberta, where they hold every seat, and revert to their recent role of being in effect the ‘Bloc Albertois’. Chances of a Liberal majority government, miniscule –would need freak ABUT results in Quebec and BC. .

As to why a Tory is campaigning bitterly against the Tories, and how the Tories (until a few weeks ago on course to gut the BQ and become the largest Quebec party) screwed up so completely they lost 40% of their support in 10 days, and why a Liberal Premier in BC refuses to campaign for the Federal Liberals (the Grits) despite the fact the Grits are pushing a Green Tax initiative (copied from our own dear selves) building on the pioneer initiative in his province .. Well Canadian politics is supposed to be boring, right, so nobody on this side of the pond could possibly be interested.

But just maybe we will end up on Wednesday morning with another superb example of why our current electoral system is a dangerous gamble, so perhaps we should spare a bit of attention.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Community Politics US style ?

The organisational revolution in US politics engineered by the Obama campaign is quietly changing the way politics work over there.

Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade…The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign …. have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization….Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation. Zack Exley Huffington Post 8 October 2008

A most interesting read for the jaded survivors of our Community Politics efforts. Wonder if our Lib Dem Presidential Candidates – and people worried about how to support our PPCs- might find the whole article of interest. There are certainly some good Liberal themes on decentralisation and trusting people to get on with the job here…

If this is for real the Obama campaign may prove to be a bit more than a knocking-up push to change the deckchair in the Oval Office.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Iceland, Russia, China... an evolving golden braid

Iceland has secured a four thousand million Euro loan from Russia to prop up its foundering economy. Talk of turn-ups for the books. Way back in 1991 when Lithuania unilaterally declared independence from the USSR Iceland was the only nation on earth to offer Lithuania recognition. It got very hostile economic attention from the Soviet authorities, and those of us working for Baltics freedom ran a ‘buy Icelandic’ campaign to show our support and help cushion Iceland’s economy.

What kind of political leverage will the Russian heirs to the USSR global position have for this 2008 financial initiative? I still have very warm feelings for Iceland so really concerned at everything that is going on.

Elsewhere I noted rather startling remark by Robert Peston (BBC business correspondent) that China has such substantial reserves it could simply buy up the entire United States banking industry. Can’t find the link for this statement, nor any justifying analysis, so would be grateful for any pointers.

I suspect China is too politically astute to walk into the political firestorm that would result from such a takeover. But ‘interesting times’ as the Chinese proverb threatens.

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